2017 influencer marketing trends have witnessed several changes in the past 8 months. In the wave of investment in Vietnam, numerous brands, especially entire new brands, are interested in doing influencer marketing campaigns in Vietnam. Recently, Beauty Hanbook of Korea had an interview with Skyperry about Influencer Marketing Trends in Vietnam which will help brands to have a clearer understanding before starting an influencer marketing campaign in this promised market.

2 trends recently emerging among influencers marketing in Vietnam:

Firstly, influencers are increasingly powerful. They have an outstanding number of followers through numerous digital platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, and Snapchat. At the moment, from social media, influencers are invading traditional media such as movies, TV shows, and newspapers. An Nguy – a Vietnamese Youtube blogger with 392k subscribers – played the main actress in her first movie film published in April 2017. Others have been self-organizing their events sponsored by brands with hundreds of fans attending.

Secondly, greatly growing investment in social content and publishing ecosystem. Many influencers have realized the opportunities of making more profits of influencer marketing. To reach out more fans and attract bigger advertising budgets, they will certainly improve their social content’s quality and expand to new digital platforms as well. The number one hot mom on Facebook in Vietnam named Gào launched her brand-new show on Youtube in May 2017. Gao like other Influencers has been constantly managing their content form to suit the audience’s needs and to reach out to as many people in their region as possible.

Those trends will certainly benefit brands with their influencer marketing strategies. On the other hand, brands should have plans for long-term partnerships with their key opinion leaders.

Instead of searching for things, millennial users are collecting information about the latest trends or hottest products via recommendations from their friends, family, and people who have a strong influence on social media. This is absolutely an influencer’s stage with relevant, entertaining, and short-form content. Unboxing of make-up videos is exactly that type of content because of their relevance, intimate and personal connection to followers

Moreover, social media algorithms tend to allow influencers’ content to get a broader reach than brand content. With similar content, boosting Facebook Ads on influencer’s fan pages is much cheaper than brand’s fan pages. For brands and agencies, It is worth considering, isn’t it?

Are there differences in influencers between your country and others?

In Vietnam, people love celebrities. It is not surprising that so many social media posts of influencers have had 100k likes on Facebook. Despite their growing costs, these mass influencers always play an essential role in influencer marketing.

Besides, micro-influencers (those with 1000k-50k followers) are rising in Vietnam. These influencers stand for guerrilla marketing strategy and are able to approach a small but significant community. For some influencers’ marketing campaigns in Vietnam in which Skyperry has taken part, the number of micro-influencers attending the campaign could go up to hundreds.

What kind of brands use influencer marketing frequently?

The most frequent brands that use influencers are cosmetic, FMCG, and personal care, especially entire new brands. Our Korean clients mainly run businesses in the apps or the cosmetic industry.

What kinds of categories are influencers specialized in Southeast Asia?

The largest numbers of influencers are beauty bloggers, hot moms, fashionistas, and young community influencers. The most frequent brands using influencer marketing are beauty, fashion, FMCG, and home & living brands.

Do you have any references that worked with Korean clients? How was it?

For Tinder Influencer Marketing campaign, We had a Youtuber named Huyme Production (515k subscribers) who made the video How I Met My Tinder for Tinder app. The video has gained 81k views, 2,5k likes, and 168 comments within 2 months.

Another outstanding case study is with Laneige: Chloe Nguyen – a beauty blogger (88k followers) made a live stream video on Laneige’s Facebook fan page to introduce a new branch of Laneige in late of 2016. The live stream has gained 20k views, 400 likes, 34 shares, and 46 comments for 10 minutes of live streaming.

How is influencer commerce or media commerce in Southeast Asia going? What is the consumers’ reaction?

Obviously, it is going to be more brands with a bigger budget spent on influencer marketing. However, keeping content intimate and personal is still the key to success for any influencer commerce plan.

Do you have any advice about influencer marketing to K-beauty brands that are looking for an agency in Southeast Asia?

It is crucial to find an experienced agency having years of experience in running influencers’ marketing campaigns. These agencies could prove their capacity through effective case studies.

The agencies that have a combination of influencer management experience and large influencers data with technical tools for identification could ensure your campaigns are executed flawlessly across strategy, execution, and measurement.

Besides, there is possibly missed communication between the agency and foreign clients. Therefore, Korean clients should deliver their campaign brief or their expectation comprehensively at first.

What do you think of the side effects of influencer marketing?

It is crucial for influencers to maintain trusted relationships among their followers. The stronger belief of followers, the heavier the responsibility influencers are carrying on. Hence, the growing number of followers goes with carefully deciding when cooperating with a new brand.

In the future, what direction is influencer marketing heading? And, what will look like?

Influencers will create their own brands through their publishing ecosystems. To reach that purpose, they need supposition from talent agencies. Therefore, the cooperation between influencers and talent agencies will be more popular.

Until then, maintaining close relationships with key influencers in industries should be the top priority for brands.

* Thank you